The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Ford Motor Company" ...
-
America's Corporate Royalty
This group of stories ran throughout all of 2008. In a year in which bad decisions by corporate leaders led the country into financial crisis, the ABC News investigative team produced a series of reports on America's corporate royalty -- the CEOs who used their company treasuries not only to enrich and pamper themselves, but to gain advantage in the courts and Congress, with scant regard for the country's democratic principles.
Tags: bailout; economic collapse; Big Three; Lehman Brothers; Wall Street; Ford; Chrysler; General Motors
-
Slaves in Amazon Forced to Make Material Used in Cars
In Brazil, Peru and Bolivia hundreds of thousands of unemployed men and women are being recruited for slavery. The workers for the slave-camps make charcoal, while being forced to live without housing, electricity or plumbing, and without pay.
Tags: slave labor; Amazon; South America; labor camps; malaria; tuberculosis; Whirlpool; Nucor; Latin America; Ford; General Motors; Nissan; Toyota; car companies
-
High Flying Perks
As automakers took more financial hits in 2006 that led to layoffs and cost-cutting, company executives asserted that they too would cut down on their personal budgets. But WXYZ-TV found out that the executives did nothing to reduce their use of corporate jets and fuel in trips costing in the tens of thousands of dollars. The eight-month investigation uncovered situations like that of Ford CEO BIll Ford, Jr. He accepted a yearly salary of only a dollar, and used company planes for personal trips to the tune of $297,201 in a single year. Ford president Mark Fields is tasked with cutting costs in the company, yet used the planes on many weekends to take trips from Detroit to his mansion in Florida at a cost of between $50,000 and $70,000 each weekend.
Tags: Money; corporate pork; corporate executives; misuse of company planes; corporate cost-cutting; automotive industry; Ford Motor Company
-
Blowout. How the tire problem turned into a crisis for Firestone and Ford. Lack of a database masked the pattern that led to yesterday's big recall. The heat and the pressure.
According to the article, "Yesterday, ine the face of a federal investigation into 46 deaths and more than 300 incidents involving Firestone tires that allegedly shredded on the highway, Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. said it would recall more than 6.5 million tires, the majority of them mounted as original equipment on Ford Motor Co. Explorers and other Ford light trucks. The Firestone brands affected are certain 15-inch Radial ATX and Radial ATX II tires produced in North America and certain Wilderness AT tires with product code P235/75R15 that were manufactured at Firestone's Decatur, Ill. plant."
Tags: Firestone; Ford; tires; blowouts; Ford Motor Company; Ford Explorers; Decatur; IL; deaths; danger; recall
-
A Twist in Torts
Car companies are digging in against frivolous lawsuits regarding air bags. Since the government requires that the bags inflate in a fraction of a second, they can possibly injure people as well as save lives. The percentage of deaths or serious injury due to air bags is small compared to the number currently in use. Instead of settling quickly in lawsuits, the car companies are saying that, "cost is no object in these cases."
Tags: torts; tort reform; lawsuits; air bags; autos; cars; automobiles; vehicles; Chrysler; dodge; juries; General Motors; Ford; liability; law; legal
-
Giving workers the treatment: If you raise a stink, you get the shrink!
Downs reports about "an increasingly popular weapon against whistleblowers: the psychiatric reprisal ... Across the country, companies have seized upon concerns about workplace violence to quash dissent. Hundreds of large corporations have hired psychiatrists and psychologists to advise them on how to weed out 'threatening' employees ... But by drawing the definition of 'threatening' as broadly as possible, they are giving themselves a new club to bang over workers." For example: Ford Motor Company electrician was barred from the factory and sent to a psychiatrist after he complained that he could not do his job because many of his bosses were taking equipment out of the plant to work on their homes or personal businesses.
Tags: workplace safety; U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration; American Postal Workers Union
-
The Widower's Tale
The New Yorker investigates the death of Tracy Thomas, a six months pregnant woman, in a car crash in New Jersey in 1997. The report depicts her and her husband as belonging to "the first generation of middle-class African-American people...." The story reveals that one month before she died, her husband "had increased the death benefit of her life-insurance policy." The reporter uncovers a belated doctors' conclusion: "Mrs. Thomas died of compression of the neck by the hands of another." The investigation describes how the widower has tried to prove that his wife's death is related to air-bag injuries, and reports on his lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company..
Tags: murder; strangulation; Cape May Court House; police; forensic doctors
-
Windstar Troubles
WBNS-TV reports on "problems with 1995 Ford Windstar transmissions ... [that] were expensive to fix and pose a safety risk." The investigation reveals that "one of the primary problems concerned aluminum forward clutch pistons, ... [which] can fail in transmissions on 1994 and 1995 Windstars, Taurus, Mercury Sables and Lincoln Continentals." It also finds 521 owner complaints about the questionable part. The reporter uncovers a 1994 Ford Motor Company service bulletin warning dealers and technicians that "the aluminium part may crack, causing gear engagement concerns." The story details several lawsuits claiming that Ford has "told its dealers to replace the aluminium part with a steel part," but has "failed to notify its customers about the defect."
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; safety; Ford; Windstar; highways; gear; transmission; NHTSA; consumer advocates; warranty
-
Asleep at the Wheel: The Government Auto Safety Breakdown
In a series of news and investigative stories the Los Angeles Times "focused on how the deceptions by auto and tire companies coupled with the ineffectiveness of the nation's auto safety regulators..." Some of the major findings included that "State Farm insurance company had notified federal regulators about problems with Firestone tires as far back as 1998, but got no response" and that "Ford Motor C. was aware of instability problems with its Explorer SUV...but twice had declined to make design changes...". Reporters found out that " tires made by Goodyear had been experiencing similar problems to the Firestones and had been linked to several fatal crashes". Some of the stories questioned the companies' practice to keep "knowledge of unsafe products out of public eye". The series raised questions about the efficiency of federal government on safety issues. It pointed out that "the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had been thwarted for over two decades from setting or updating auto safety standards because of industry pressure and lack of funding and political support from Congress."
Tags: Firestone; automobiles; highways; tires. lawsuits; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; accidents; fatalities; Ford; Goodyear; State Farm Insurance; Continental General Tire Inc.; General Motors; Suzuki; Venezuela; Saudi Arabia; FARS; NHTSA
-
Not So Fast
NBC News Dateline reports that "For more than a decade, automakers and federal safety officials have blamed reports of sudden acceleration on 'driver error' - people mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brake. But an exhaustive 9-month investigation by Dateline NBC uncovered evidence -- including internal company memos -- suggesting another cause: electrical short circuits in some modern cars. It was a report that, in the end, had the man who once led the government's investigation wondering if his agency had fully explored sudden acceleration..."